Pioneer Power Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:PPSI) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 16, 2022 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Brett Maas - Hayden Investor Relations

Nathan Mazurek - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Walter Michalec - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Amit Dayal - H.C. Wainwright & Co.

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Pioneer Power Solutions 2022 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brett Maas of Hayden IR. Please go ahead.

Brett Maas

Thank you and welcome. The call today will be hosted by Nathan Mazurek, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Walter Michalec, Chief Financial Officer; and also on the call today is Geo Murickan, President of the company's recently launched Pioneer Power Mobility business Unit. Following this discussion, there will be a Q&A session open to the participants on the call. We appreciate the opportunity to review the first quarter of 2022 financial results as well as discuss recent business highlights.

Before we get started, let me remind you this call is being recorded and webcast. During this call, management will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to the cautionary text regarding forward-looking statements contained in the earnings release issued earlier today and in the posted version of these prepared remarks, both of which apply to the content of the call.

I would now like to turn the call over to Nathan Mazurek, Chairman and CEO. Nathan, please go ahead.

Nathan Mazurek

Thank you, Brett. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us today for our conference call. 2022 is off to an excellent start. Following the sale of our transformer business in August of 2019, we shifted our strategy to focus on 2 significant, durable, secular tailwinds: Distributed generation and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This shift was deliberate and calculated, designed to leverage our engineering, technical and marketing capabilities most profitably within the electrical equipment landscape. This business shift has indeed unfolded as we had anticipated.

The opportunities related to distributed generation and electric vehicle charging are both significantly manifesting themselves, as reflected by our vastly improved financial results for the first quarter of 2022. Our revenue for the quarter was up more than 70% year-over-year and sequentially as well. In addition, our backlog increased sequentially and year-over-year to the highest level in more than 30 months, even as we grew our top line by over 70%. This growth reflects only the initial phase for our new solutions. We believe that as demand continues to grow and combined with our current backlog, we are confident that we will increase our revenue by at least 50% in 2022, with E-Boost and e-Bloc becoming increasingly relevant to our consolidated results as the year progresses. In addition, in the first quarter, the increased volume, combined with improved manufacturing productivity, resulted in gross margins expanding to over 14% from 4.5% last year.